Australia loves its bats, and it has some good ones.  But after the beautiful flying foxes, what bat would one put on a coin?  How about the Ghost Bat (Macroderma gigas).  This bat is carnivorous, and like many such bats gets the nickname the False Vampire Bat, with the emphasis on "false."

These are cave bats, mostly found in northern Australia, and are a bit ghostly looking.  They are gray on the top, and white on the bottom so there is that.  But, they are actually called ghost bats because they have very thin wing membranes which give them a bit of a ghost-like appearance during flight.

The coin itself is quite the thing.  With opal being a national treasure of Australia, they set about designing an entire set of coins using opal inlays.  There are quite a number of animals in the series, such as kangaroos and pythons and the like, but in 2015 they gave the ghost bat the opal treatment.

So here it is.  A 2015 Australia $1 PROOF 99.9% silver coin with a ghost bat inlaid with opal.
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Now that's a very neat-o coin, and fantastically difficult to photograph.  The outer rim is silver and in a mirror proof finish, while the center is black with an opal inlay that twinkles colors in the shape of a bat.  It will take more than one photo to really show this one.

But the coin itself is extremely well-designed.  The bat in the center with the black (for night) is surrounded by a set of cave formations (for its habitat), a crescent moon (neat how they show the full moon with only detail on the crescent) to show it is night out, and the southern cross constellation to note it is the southern hemisphere.  Exactly what the meaning of those kurrajong flowers is eludes me, but must be something particularly Australian.  Oh yeah, and the little 'P' is the mint mark and stand for the Perth Mint, and the other small print says "ghost bat" and 2015 1oz 999 silver.

The coin is fully legal tender and could be spent for a dollar, not that that is likely to ever happen.  Which bring me to the other side (which is the obverse, and which is the reverse is a bit confusing here).

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On this side one finds Queen Elizabeth II, surrounded by rays and looking most majestic.  And other than the country name, Australia, the coin is simplified down to just the denomination.  Elegant actually.

But there needs to be a better look at the bat.  Not that it was designed to really look exactly like the bat, but to see the inlay better.  Which was another photographic trouble spot.  With the lighting needed to get any kind of photo every little tiny mote of dust lit up like a miniature sun and well lots of other stuff.  But here is a look at the inlay.

Looks quite like a bat!  Remarkable job I'd say, and in fact it honestly does look a lot like the ghost bat in most ways.  Well done.

So, this coin needs some kind of box to package it up and send it in and keep it in.  So, they did up an equally nice bit of packaging.  The box itself is well-designed with all the elements that are on the coin, and inside it comes with a certificate of authenticity and information about the coin and the bat.  Of note, they say that no more than 8,000 of these will be distributed. 
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And finally, FINALLY, I will try and show just exactly how the Perth Mint meant for the coin to be gawked at.  See, in that little felt case that actually houses the coin, there is a photo sensor that, when it senses light, turns on a little LED light aimed at the coin.  Yeah, really.  So you open it up, the light comes on, and the con just absolutely glows brilliantly with all that silver and opal and colors and well, take a look...

Transnistria is a non-UN recognized country that is too complicated to fully explain here.  It calls itself Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, but even as it has it's own government and all, it is considered part of Moldova which calls it the Transnistria Autonomous Territorial Unit with special legal status.  

​Most of their coins, yes they issue their own money, are in kopeks and roubles (or rubles) but in 2005 they joined a long parade of countries that have done such and issued a "trial" Euro coin.  This is not a legal tender coin and is considered a Fantasy Issue.

​The coin is bi-metal and just larger than a US quarter, coming in at a 21.8mm diameter and 7.2g weight.  The outer ring is made of nickel-brass and the inner part is copper-nickel.  With a mintage of just 1,000 coins it is not particularly common.

​The obverse is somewhat sparse, showing the date at the top and the word TRANSNISTRIA at the bottom, with a stylized bat in the middle.  The bat would appear to be a characterized flying fox of some kind, but not a particularly good looking one.  While I like the basic simplicity of the design, the tail looks much to much like a plane rudder and not bat-like at all.  But the killer for this design is that the bat's left wing (the one on the right on the coin) has one too many fingers!  Look at the difference between the wings and it is quite obvious.

The reverse of the coin is quite nice, showing a blind Lady Liberty holding her scale and a sword (in case the scale doesn't balance I suppose).  It also has the 2 Euro denomination in the center.
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Australia loves its big bats, so a coin with a flying fox on it is to be expected.  This interesting coin is part of The Air Series, which of course followed The Land and The Ocean series.  I wonder if they ever did The Fire series to cover them all?

​The coin is made of an Aluminum/Bronze combination and is about the size of a US quarter coming in at 9g with a diameter of 25mm.  On the card that comes with the coin is the mintage "unlimited" but the posted mintage figure for the coin is 17,002.  Pretty high number for a specialty bat coin.  

​Depicted on the reverse is the grey-headed flying fox (Pteropus poliocephalus), which is a large Australian bat with a wing span of up to a meter or so.  A favorite food of these bats is the fruit of the Lilly Pilly tree, and that is what is depicted on the reverse as leafy branches with flower/fruit clusters.  The bat itself is "pad printed" onto the coin, which is a method of printing in 2D on a 3D object.  The bat looks good at a distance, and is accurate and all, but up close it is very noisy and not a very crisp image.  Additionally there is the denomination of 1 DOLLAR.

The obverse of the coin is the usual design for coins of the British Realm, a picture of Queen Elizabeth II along with text noting that and the country and date.  

And that would be the end of the story, but there are two more things to note here.  First, this is not a proof coin, but a matte uncirculated coin.  So the finish on the flat fields is a satiny matte, while the raised portions are shiny smooth.  Kinda the opposite effect of a cameo proof.  This isn't so easy to see in the above images, so here is a different angle.

Which brings me to the final thing.  Note the bits of dust and stuff (even a sliver of plastic wrapping) in the photo.  These coins are issued in a blister pack on a cardboard card, and so the photos were taken through plastic and crud and really hard to make a very well-made coin look good.

​The card it is mounted on contains a number of factoids, many of which are noted here.  The side with the bat on it however is quite nice, with a highlighted bat on a field of tree/bats in silhouette.  The moon is hiding behind the bat making for the silhouette effect to be very realistic, which begs the question where did the light come from that is shining in the bat's eyes and lighting it up?  Trivia, as this is a very nice image.

​The rest is readable in the photos below, but the circular hologram just did not like my photographic light.  It is a little circle with a kangaroo and emu in the middle on the sides of an Australian emblem and the number "50" which I do not know the meaning of.  Surrounding this are the words:  official numismatic program Royal Australian Mint

Now THIS is a bat coin!  Canada started its "Nocturnal by Nature" series in 2016 (owl) and continues it this year with the little brown bat.  These coins are beautiful, clever and extremely well done.

​The little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) is the focus animal, but designer Calder Moore (initials under the bat's wing) outdid himself.  First, and most striking, the coin is partially plated (including the rim) in Rhodium.  And a little about that...

​Rhodium is a rare precious metal (runs about $1,500 per ounce so just more than gold) that comes in at number 45 on the periodic table (symbol Rh).  It has some cool properties like being completely impervious to nitric acid, but few uses.  It's main use is as a noxious chemical "cleaner" in catalytic converters in vehicles, which is why those things are so expensive to replace and a target for thieves.

​But back to the coin.  It is a big coin at 38mm diameter, and weighs 31.39g so pretty much a standard 1 oz round size.  Made of pure silver it is a matte proof so has the ultra-smooth fields and frosty cameo raised areas (primarily the bat and the queen).  And as the mint notes, tilting the coin shows different levels of matte and glossy shine depending on how it is held.  See the video from the mint at the end of this post.

So, the standard bits on the obverse:  CANADA, 20 DOLLARS, and the date 2017.  And without tons of distractions, there is just the bat and the moon.  The moon is not plated in rhodium, and so appears as if shining brightly in the night sky, a very cool effect.  And it has such detail that it looks like a 3D NASA map of the moon's surface.  Fantastic detail.

​Now the bat itself, seen here flying in a Rhodium night with a full silver moon behind it.  Noted in the Certificate of Authenticity as a Little Brown Bat, I would almost tend to agree.  The anatomy is perfect for a bat, right down to minute details like the gap between the upper canine teeth and the tragus visible inside the ear.  And really, it is an honest bat with such things as the bone structure perfect and the shape of the tail membrane correct with the calcar (little cartilage bits that come off from the ankles and run along the edge of the tail membrane) creating the proper flight shape.  One of the best bats on coins, no doubt.

​My only grief here is that the face and ears do not exactly look like a little brown bat, and maybe that the body is too large as that would be a pretty darn fat little brown.  Anyway, to be specific about the face and ears, I would suggest that they were actually taken from a silver-haired bat (a very common bat in Canada).  The ears are too blunt and rounded, the tragus is much too blunt and the face looks flatter.  Now understand that these bats are in the same Family, and are look quite similar in black and white, but I just see a silver-haired bat when I look at it not a little brown.  Of note, however, the silver-haired bat has more fur on the wing and membrane areas than depicted here, so it doesn't seem like a wrong-bat fail, just an odd face on a little brown.

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The reverse is the usual fare, with Queen Elizabeth looking particularly good (she is currently 91 years old) in this Susanna Blunt design and the text ELIZABETH II AND D.G.REGINA  around the rim.  

​The Royal Canadian Mint produces a large number of interesting coins, and does a very good job with them, with this one being a standout.  And they did a spiffy little YouTube video of this one to show how the looks vary depending on lighting angle, so I leave you staring and the thing going round and round...

This is only a bat coin in the broadest sense.  There are untold numbers of coins and coin-like things with the Chinese blessings symbols on them, and the bat is one of the more prominent symbols.  Often the only symbol, with a ring of five bats making up the design.  But I am just firing up this round of bat coins and this one was next on the list.

​While this is a coin, with a denomination of five Canadian dollars, it was minted more as silver bullion.  I can find no mintage figure so really don't know how many were made, but it sold for just a little over the value of the silver and most major dealers sold out of them fairly quickly.  It has a diameter of 38mm, like most silver rounds and weighs in at 1 ounce.  Other similar coins to this one were also minted in other years and also in gold, but it is not enough of a bat coin for me to collect every variety available.

​The obverse is the standard issue current portrait of Queen Elizabeth II with just a few words around the rim noting just that along with the date and the denomination.  Of note, these come in a tightly sealed plastic wrap, so the photos have weird glare around the edges.  This also created a problem for the coins themselves as many were issued with "milk spots" on them likely from impurities inside the casing when it was sealed.  These spotty ones are not in demand so look carefully at any of these if you are thinking to buy one.

The reverse of the coin has the four animals and one symbol associated with the five blessings.  The bat is up top and is, as usual for such things, highly stylized and actually quite dragon-like up close.  Very hard to get an acceptable photo through that plastic sheeting of the details, but...

The other animals are the deer, cranes and magpie along with the Chinese symbol for good fortune.

The other animals are pretty close to reality, so interesting that they still chose to use the stylized bat instead of a real example.  Other than that it has the country name on it and notes that it is 1 ounce.  0.9999 fine silver is written both in English and in Latin for all those folks who don't get to read enough Latin in their daily lives.

​Stay tuned!  Canada really rocked the house with its latest bat coin, and that one will be up next...

It is time for another round of bat coins.  To start off this set, a fine coin from Austria.  This is a copper 5 Euro coin commemorating the Johann Struass II Operetta "Die Fledermaus" or in English, The Bat.  

​The coin is just a shade smaller than a US half dollar, coming in at 28.5mm in diameter and 8.9g in weight.  And it is nonagonal in shape (your word of the day!  meaning 9-sided), which is certainly an odd shape.  But it looks pretty cool.  It came in two versions, one copper and one silver (I will get to the silver one at a later date) neither of which were for general circulation.  Even so, 200,000 were minted so not exactly a rare coin.

​The obverse is a depiction of a lady drinking champaign at a ball (the operetta is not about a bat, but about a ball in Vienna, Austria in the 1800's).  In the upper left are the words "DIE FLEDERMAUS" (The Bat in Austrian/German) and among the cluster of champaign bubbles is a flying bat.  It is a fine little bat of some kind, looking very much like an insectivorous bat from Europe.  The nose is a bit cat-like instead of bat-like, but that is such a small detail!

The reverse, while spiffy enough, is standard coinage fare.  The shield of the 9 Federal Austrian States surrounds the denomination and around the rim are the words "REPUBLIK OSTERREICH" AND "EURO".

And finally, the edge of the coin also got a treatment.  The flat sections have reeding while the bits near the bends do not.  So overall a lot of interesting geometry and details but not too much about bats going on.

After a short break, during which I have been accused of everything from abandoning my blog to being sucked through the time-space continuum, I am back.

​Next up on the bat coin blog topic is a 2010 Poland 20 Zlotych coin.  This coin is part of Poland's Animals of the World series and really, they have a lot of animals in this series.  But this coin is similar in some ways to the first bat coin I put up, a 2010 2 Zlotych coin that much less needs said here.

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Truly a beautiful coin.  It is made of 0.925 fine silver (sterling) and comes in at a hefty 28.28g (let's call it an ounce).  It is a proof strike so the detail is amazing, and here shown with the mirror finish reflecting black to simulate night.  As with the 2 Zlotych coin from 2010, the subject is the Lesser Horseshoe Bat, although this time they are leaving a day roost in a wooden structure (or possibly returning).  The rendering of the bats, both those flying and those roosting is very good, and the designer really got the bat correct to species and detail.  I love it when that happens. 

​The design includes six roosting bats, four fully shrouded in sleep posture and two with heads exposed in the awake pose.  The main flying bat is one of the best on any bat coin with accurate detail right down to a visible tragus in the bat's ear.  The other two bats are flying away (so probably leaving at evening) and while small and less detailed they are nonetheless very nicely done.  I do find it odd that the little cabin in the distance has no door or windows, but there is always the side you can't see.

​And Podkowiec maly means small horseshoe, as in "lesser horseshe".  Didn't seem to be quite enough room for the Polish word for bat, which is nietoperz

The obverse of this coin is essentially the same as the 2 Zlotych from the early post, but this time in splendid silver proof. 

​Overall one of the best of the bat coins in a lot of ways.

Here is a very nice bat coin, and one of the earlier years for such.  Most bat coins have come out very recently and anything before the year 2000 is unusual.  This is the 1994 $10 (10 tala) Western Samoa Endangered Wildlife coin.  Some might call it a token, as it is a Fantasy Issue and part of a long campaign by the World Wildlife Fund to produce coins from countries around the world focusing on wildlife.

​It is a really nice coin, about the size of the old large US silver dollars (38mm in diameter) and made with 31g of 0.925 pure silver (so about an ounce of pure silver).  It is a proof coin and really shines.  There is precious little information about this issue anywhere, but it would seem that the initial mintage was about 20,000, although that seems high given how few of these there seem to be around.  Even numista.com, which seems to have about every coin ever made on it, does not have this one.

One is left to assume that the bat on the coin is the Samoan Flying Fox (Pteropus samoensis) which was discussed in detail in an earlier post about Samoan bat coins.  However, this design has a bit of trouble.  While the bat is clearly a flying fox, I am not super thrilled with the bold whiskers on the rostrum, as it looks odd.  And then there is the bit with the bat seeming to have an opposable "thumb" on the foot, which it does not have.  But those two things are merely iffy, the main issue is just wrong.

​Looking at the bat's left wing you will see the correct anatomy of a bat's wing (more or less).  Bats have five fingers, but the second finger runs pretty close to the first finger (skipping the thumb which is the little hook coming off the wrist) and there is only one point at the tip of the wing for both fingers.  Now look at the bat's right wing.  Oops, it has FOUR fingers all reaching the edge of the wing separately.  So a pretty major goof for a coin produced specifically to focus attention on the bat.

​The other elements of the obverse are pretty straightforward.  The date at the top and the "Endangered Wildlife" slogan that is on all these WWF coins on the bottom.  Mixed in is a banana plant, which is a source of food for these bats, and some islands with palm trees and a volcano.  Very nice.  Makes you want to visit.

The reverse of the coin is very simple, but quite a nice design.  The country at the top, the denomination at the bottom, and the national arms in the middle. 

​So a super-collectible coin getting harder to find all the time, proof, and made from an ounce of silver.  And in theory the initial purchase went to  help fund wildlife conservation.  A winner of a bat coin, even if they don't really quite know what a bat's wing looks like.

This is the third coin in the Stop Ebola! series, and so far I only know of these three.  The coin is from Sierra Leone and is a whopping 1,250,000 Leones, so now I can say I am a millionaire!  And that is a significant sum of money, approximately US $166 at today's exchange rate.  So one of the more expensive face value coins out there.  And, at a mintage of just 100, one of the most rare of bat coins.  But like the others, it is a Fantasy Issue and not legal tender.

​And what is not apparent in a photo of just the coin is the sheer size of this thing.  It comes in at a stunning 70mm (2.75 inches) diameter and is a brick at 105.3 grams (3.71 ounces).  I can not find any information on what metal it is made of, but it is a proof-like mintage (or possibly a true proof) with a mirror surface on the flat parts and frosted on the raised parts.  A real beauty.

Please refer to the previous two posts about this series for details about the designs and details, but this coin is in particular need of some discussion of the bat itself.  At first glance, it almost does not even look like a bat, what with being right-side up and the wings being hard to differentiate from the branches.  The face is very blunt for an African flying fox and that foot right by the chest is just odd.  Okay, so who came up with this design?

​Answer:  I don't know, but I do know where the design came from.  This design is done from a photograph by Anton Croos of a bat moving through the branches (instead of just hanging).  I don't have permission to reproduce it here, but here is a link to a blog page about bats that uses the photo with attribution.  You will notice it is the exact bat and pose used here.

​http://whyfiles.org/2014/bats-on-the-wing/

And did you go there?  Nice page with lots of very good bat info.  And in the caption for the photo by Mr. Croos one should notice that the picture is of a bat taken in Sri Lanka.  Last time I looked at a map Sri Lanka was off the southern coast of India and no where near Africa.  So...  Did they use this bat photo with permission for the coin image?  I don't know, but if I were the photographer I think I would not give permission to use an Asian bat on a coin representing Africa.  And surely given the high quality of this photo he had a better bat picture around than this one for a coin image.  And so there you have it, the origin of the image, but no answer as to how that image ended up on this coin.

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Other than being huge and now up to 100 Afros, the reverse of this coin is very similar to the reverse of the 200,000 Francs coin from Guinea.  And being so big the coin offered quite the challenge to photograph, as it is the size of a hand mirror and just as reflective.  Getting a shot of the coin without a reflection of the camera was not easy.  And the trade off was that the photos of the coin are not nearly as pretty as the coin itself is in-hand.  It really is a beautiful, giant, coin.

​So that is it for the Stop Ebola! series.  From what I know I can say that these are rare coins (good from a collector's standpoint) and that they seem to have a bit of a mysterious origin and minting (bad from a collector's standpoint as origin and authenticity are key in collecting).  Really cool additions to a bat coin collection, but not really sure how they fit in anywhere else.

​And, since I have made it clear that this final coin is large, I will end with a photo of it next to a US one cent coin for comparison.  Which would you rather have in your pocket? (trick question, as the big coin is worth a whole lot more than a cent)

Part two of the three posts on the Stop Ebola! coins.  Again, these are Fantasy Issue coins and not legal tender, but they are very worthy of having a look at.  And for a total cop-out on my lack of detailed information on Ebola or the African Monetary Union see my last blog post.  Also, before you ask, both my spelling and the spelling on the coin of "Guinea" are correct.  I am using the standard English spelling, while the coin uses the native French spelling (although missing the accent on the first e) of Guinée.

​Here we have a much larger coin than the Liberia 1 Afro (250 dollars) coin.  This hefty coin is from Guinea, and slightly larger than the old US silver dollars back when they were the biggest things out there.  It has a diameter of 40mm or just over an inch and a half, or about as big as any coin had ought to be.  The denomination is 10 Afros, or 200,000 Francs (about US $22 as of now).  And with a mintage listed at a whopping 101, it is one of the most rare bat coins out there.  However, as with all of these Afro coins, I really can't figure out who minted them so there is just the seller's word as to how many were made.  There is also the question of what it is made of, which can't be answered without something from a mint.

The obverse of the coin has the country at the top and the denomination with year at the bottom.  Pretty basic there, but they decided to colorize the lettering in red, along with the words Stop Ebola! and part of the international biohazard symbol.  The majority of the symbol is in black but then there is a bit of white in there mostly where the word "virus" comes across the mini outline of Africa.  The word virus does not have its own color so pretty much invisible here but it is raised metal and can be seen under magnification.

​The bat is another flying fox, and seemingly pretty accurate in detail, although I can't be sure of which species they are representing.  The overall pose is only "okay" in that I find the bat's left wrist (that big thing to the right of the face) is not entirely clear as to what it is for someone who hasn't seen a lot of bats. 

Most interestingly, the bat itself is all tangled up in a mesh net, which surely must be confusing to the average viewer of the coin (as it is to me).  I am guessing here that this is a mist net, and the bat is being captured alive by scientists for Ebola studies.  But there is nothing at all to back this up, and since I have personally seen home-made hand nets in Africa designed to capture bats for food, well, that would be bad.  Scientists studying bats...good.  Locals capturing potential Ebola virus source for food...bad.  It would be helpful if that second possible interpretation were not real, but it is.  And of course I have to say that the flying foxes tend to have beautiful eyes and a dog/fox-like face, not slanty evil eyes and a mad snarl expression.  They could have done that bit better.

Not too much to say about the reverse, as it is quite similar to the Liberia coin.  The changes here are the denomination is up to 10 Afros (and that braille is really close together for a blind person to read it), it is colorized, and of interest the EASY MONEY monetary logos are missing.  Also I should have noted for the previous coin that the symbol of Africa surrounded by rays and stars is actually the flag of the African Union, and not just a random coin design.

​The final note here is that while the colorizing of the coin adds some visual appeal, it also detracts from the coin as money instead of artwork.  So if you are going to colorize a coin and make it art, well do it well, something they did not do here.  I like the colors and how the dominant portions of the coin are silver colored and the colorized parts are just highlights, but the paint job kinda stinks.  This is an uncirculated proof-like coin and it has paint spatter to the right of the date on the obverse and lots of places where the paint is chipping or wasn't applied right in the first place.  Not so apparent with just a quick glance, but give a look at the 10 in 10 Afros and you will see a lot of paint missing there.  Too nice a coin not to finish it well, so I wish they would have put just that little extra effort in there.